House of Echoes. Barbara Erskine

lost under the silks and cotton threads – a small ornate key which Joss knew instinctively would fit the keyhole in the desk.

      Reaching up she switched on the lamp which rested on the top of the desk, and stared at the array of small pigeon holes which the opened lid revealed. It was tidy but not empty and it was immediately obvious that the desk had been her mother’s. Taking a sip from her glass Joss reached for a bundle of letters. With a strange feeling half of guilt, half excitement she pulled off the ribbon which bound them together.

      They were all addressed to her mother and they came from someone called Nancy. She glanced through them, wondering who Nancy was. A close friend and a gossip by the look of it, who had lived in Eastbourne. They told her nothing at all about her mother, but quite a lot about the unknown Nancy. With a tolerant smile she retied the ribbon and tucked them back in their place.

      There were pens and a bottle of ink, paper clips, tags, envelopes, all the paraphernalia of a busy person; a drawer of unused headed note paper, and there, in another drawer by itself, a leather-bound notebook. Curiously Joss pulled it out and opened it. On the flyleaf, in her mother’s hand was written ‘For my daughter, Lydia’. Joss shivered. Had her mother been so sure then that she would come to Belheddon; that one day she would sit down on this chair at this desk and pull open the drawers one by one until she found – she flicked it open – not a diary, as she had half expected, just empty pages, undated.

      And one short scrawled paragraph, towards the middle of the book:

      He came again today, without warning and without mercy. My fear makes him stronger –

      ‘Joss?’ Luke’s voice in the doorway made her jump out of her skin. He was dressed in his bathrobe and from where she sat she could smell the musky drift of his aftershave.

      She slammed the book shut and took a deep breath.

      ‘What is it? Is something wrong?’

      ‘No. Nothing.’ Slotting the notebook back into its drawer she pulled down the flap on the desk, turning the key. ‘The desk was my mother’s. It seems so strange to read her letters and things –’

       My fear makes him stronger

      Who, for God’s sake? Who was her mother so frightened of and why had she written about him in an otherwise empty notebook which she had left especially for Joss to read?

      As she lay in the four-poster bed, staring up at the silk decoration in the darkness over her head Joss found it hard to close her eyes. Beside her Luke had fallen into a restless sleep almost as soon as his head had touched the pillow. They were both worn out. After all, the day had started at five in London and now, at midnight, they were at Belheddon, and for better or for worse this was now their home.

      Moving her head slightly to left or right Joss could see the squares of starlight which showed the two windows on opposite sides of the room. Divided by stone mullions in the old plaster one looked over the front of the house and down the drive towards the village, the other across the back garden and down towards the lake and beyond it, over the hedge to the river estuary and beyond it the distant North Sea. Initially Luke had closed the curtains when he came upstairs. They were heavy with woollen embroidery, double lined against the cold, luxurious. Looking at them Joss was grateful for their weight against the draughts, but even so, she pulled them open before she climbed into the high bed. ‘Too claustrophobic,’ she explained to Luke as he lay back beside her. His only answer, minutes later, was a gentle snore. Outside the moon shone onto a garden as bright as day as the frosty sparkle hardened into a skim of ice. Shivering, Joss huddled down under the duvet – a modern concession, the embroidered bed cover carefully folded away for safety – glad of the solid warmth of her sleeping husband. Surreptitiously her hand strayed to his shoulder. As she snuggled up against him in the darkness she did not see the slight movement in the corner of the room.

       7

      It was still dark when Joss slipped from the bed, tiptoeing across the icy floor in bare feet. Behind her Luke gave a quiet murmur and, punching the pillow turned over and went back to sleep. Switching on the light in the bathroom Joss reached for her clothes, left piled on the chair. Thick trousers, shirt, two sweaters, heavy thermal socks. In the ice cold room her breath came in small clouds. On the window pane, as she held back the curtain and peered out into the darkness she was enchanted and horrified to find the beautiful, lacy designs of Jack Frost on the inside of the glass. With a rueful smile she padded across the floor and glanced through Tom’s door. Worn out by the excitement of the day before he was sleeping flat on his back, his arms above his head on the pillow, his cheeks pink with sleep. Tiptoeing to the chest where his night light burned she glanced at the thermometer which Alice had suggested they keep in the room. The temperature was steady. With a fond smile, she tiptoed out of the room and left the door slightly ajar. If he woke, Luke would hear him.

      Putting the kettle onto the stove Joss went to the back door and pulled it open. The morning blackness was totally silent. No bird song. No traffic murmur in the distance as there would have been in London; no cheerful clank of milk bottles. Pulling on her heavy coat she stepped out into the courtyard. The bulk of the old Bentley had been pulled into the coach house and the doors closed. There was nothing here now, but their own Citroën, covered in a thick white frost. The gate out into the garden was painfully cold even beneath her gloved hands as she pushed it back and let herself out onto the matted lawn. Above her head the stars were still blazing as though it were full night. Glancing up she could see a faint light shining from behind the curtains in Lyn’s room. Was she too unable to sleep in a strange bed?

      The grass was spiky, brittle beneath her boots. Almost she could hear the tinkle of broken glass as she walked across it, skirting the skeletal branches of a blackly silhouetted tree, down towards the gleam of water. In the east now, she realised, the stars were dimming. Soon it would begin to grow light.

      She stood for several moments, gloved hands in pockets, staring down at the ice as around her the garden began imperceptibly to brighten. She was numb with cold, but through the chill she could feel something else. Apprehension – fear even – for what they had done. They had had no real choice. Even if Luke had found a job working for someone else she doubted if they could have afforded the rent on a flat of a decent size and certainly they couldn’t have bought somewhere of their own. They could no longer live in London. But this, this was so different. Another world from the one they had planned together when they had first got married. She frowned, stamping her feet, reluctant as yet to go back inside. A new world, new people, new memories – no, memories wasn’t the right word. A history to be learned and assimilated and in some way lived.

       Sammy!

      The voice, a boy’s voice, called suddenly out of the darkness behind her. Joss spun round.

       Sammy!

      It came again, more distant now.

      Across the lawn, in the house, a light had appeared in her and Luke’s bedroom. The curtains weren’t quite closed and a broad vee of light flooded out across the frosted grass.

      ‘Hello?’ Joss’s voice was a husky intrusion into the intense silence. ‘Who’s there?’ She glanced round. The stars were disappearing fast now. A dull greyness was drifting in amongst the bushes in the shrubbery near her. She frowned. ‘Is there someone there?’ She called again, more loudly this time, her voice seeming to echo across the water. In the distance a bird called loudly. Then the silence returned.

      Turning sharply back to the house she found she was shivering violently as she hurried back in the direction of the kitchen. Pulling off her boots and gloves she ran inside, blowing on her fingers, to find the kettle cheerfully filling the room with steam. When Luke appeared, some ten minutes later, she was sitting at the table, still in her heavy coat, her hands cupped around a mug of tea.

      ‘So,